Red beans: The Times-Picayune covers 175 years of New Orleans history

Walk into a New Orleans kitchen on a Monday, and you may be welcomed by the smell of simmering red beans and steaming rice. In both restaurants and homes, red beans and rice form a tasty citywide tradition that transcends class, race and age. Local lore is that the weekly ritual stems from the days before washing machines, when Mondays meant long hours of washing clothes.

175 years of history

The outdoor work allowed scant time for preparing meals, so women began using hambones left from Sunday dinner and red beans soaked overnight to create a dish that required all-day cooking but little attention.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when the dish first appeared here, but some trace its origin to the African slave trade. Others credit the Haitian slave revolt of 1791-1803 with sending refugees of various backgrounds to Louisiana, where African, Caribbean and French culinary influences further melded with Creole cuisine.

New Orleans jazz great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong trumpeted his love for the dish, naming it his favorite and even signing some letters “Red Beans & Ricely Yours!” The meal has itself become a cultural icon, surfacing in music (“They All Ask’d for You”), graffiti (“Red Beans” tagged on garbage bins), jewelry (red beans and rice necklaces made of silver and pearls), T-shirts (Storyville, Etsy.com and others), stage names (RedBean the comedian), and Carnival clubs and costumes (RedBeans Krewe).

New Orleans cuisine is not known for its health benefits, but red beans and rice could be the exception, as amino acids in the beans and rice combine to form a complete protein.